Although the President denies it, as of Thursday night, it was reported that while in talks with Congressional representatives over our country’s immigration mess, Donald Trump referred to places like Haiti, El Salvador, and at least some of Africa as “s-hole” countries.
All too predictably, his nemeses in the media went ballistic, charging the President—again, all too predictably—with harboring animosity toward “people of color,” “racism,” and so forth.
Admittedly, I have no doubts that this orgy of outrage, like that to which viewers were subjected this past Sunday night by Hollywood at its Golden Globes ceremony, is but another exhibition of Fake Virtue. The hand-wringing is counterfeit, the product either of crass political opportunism or, perhaps, a genuine unwillingness to think through the President’s alleged comment.
The truth is that in many instances, it is doubtless a combination of the two.
At any rate, here are some questions for the outraged:
(1)Why do you think legions of people from those “s-hole” countries risk life and limb to flee their homelands and come to Western countries, like America?
(2)Do you think that their actions reveal their agreement or disagreement with the President?
(3)Unless these countries fit Trump’s description of them, do you think that immigration enthusiasts and activists in the US (and the rest of the West) would be tirelessly trying to guilt Westerners into letting folks from these countries into their own by telling us that they are only trying to provide better lives for their families?
(4)Unless these countries were as POTUS described them, do you think that his critics would have spent decades siphoning from Western taxpayers their hard-earned dollars, money that is then given to these very countries as “foreign aid?”
(5)Why the perpetual need for aid if things are so desirable in these countries?
(6)If Trump is “racist” for recognizing that the quality of life in countries like Haiti, El Salvador, and in much of the continent of Africa is abysmally, scandalously, outrageously poor, then isn’t every person in America—black as well as non-black—”racist” for recognizing the disgraceful, life-inhibiting quality of life in America’s ghettoes?
(7)The rate of “black flight” (of blacks, ala George Jefferson, “movin’ on up”) from black neighborhoods and cities exceeded in the late 70s, 80s, and 90s that of the “white flight” that transpired in the 50s and 60s. Isn’t this confirmation that all Americans who avoid these areas recognize them as “s-holes?”
(8)Isn’t it the case that every person who has ever referred to America as “AmeriKKKa, “racist,” “white supremacist,” “patriarchal,” “sexist,” “Islamophobic,” “xenophobic,” “homophobic,” etc. has, in effect, condemned America as a “s-hole?”
(9)After all, a country that dehumanizes, objectifies, and, as Ta Neshi Coates says, disposes of “black bodies” as if they were trash, is, at the very least, a “s-hole,” is it not?
(10) And if Trump harbors animosity against non-white peoples for referring to some of these countries as “shitholes,” isn’t it the case that everyone who has ever characterized America in any of the foregoing terms harbors animosity toward Americans? Isn’t it the case they are in fact guilty, as many of us have said for quite some time, of being…ANTI-AMERICAN?
(11) If these countries are not as Trump was said to have described them, then whey is no one, including and especially his most vociferous critics, not moving to them? In fact, they aren’t spending anytime there at all. Why?
While one can perhaps take exception to the President’s choice, or alleged choice, of words, this is an entirely different matter than taking exception to the substance of his judgement.
Some parting questions:
If, as Trump’s foes—i.e. the left—have been telling us for longer than I’ve been alive, America, or “AmeriKKKa,” as they not so affectionately call it, is a bastion of “white supremacy,” then why is it that the conflict in AmeriKKKa has nothing to do with keeping people in, but keeping them out?
Moreover, why is it that the overwhelming majority of human beings who are breaking laws and sacrificing everything to live in White Supremacist AmeriKKKa people of color? Even The New York Times, 13 years ago, reported that between 1990 and 2005—a mere 15 year period—more Africans immigrated to the United States than ever came to our shores on slave ships during the entire duration of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.
If America is really AmeriKKKa, then wouldn’t anti-racists be morally required to insure that no non-whites enter this oasis of White Supremacy? What better way to shield them than to help them remain within their own racially homogenous, non-white countries?
The truth of the matter is this:
The whole leftist, PC, “progressive” narrative is a castle of contradictions.
And, to repeat, the outrage over what the President was reported to have said is the function of either political opportunism or, what Hannah Arendt referred to as “the curious, but quite inauthentic, inability to think.”